Today is Adams Transplant anniversary, it was at around 7.25 pm on this day in 2001 that he has his bone marrow transplant, we watched Coronation Street together as I recall!

It seems such a long time ago now and this week has served as a reminder of how this disease can plat havoc with your life.

On Monday, having had a couple of weeks to prepare himself for the onslaught of another round of intensive chemo, Adam went into UCH for what was expected to be a months in patient stay for the chemo.

The docs said that in fact his body probably wouldn’t survive the treatment so after a lot of head scratching and some ‘one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing’ moments, they agreed that they would give him some chemo that he could administer at home instead, he was pretty delighted by this as you can imagine.

His platelets have been very low, apart from the fact that they are the first things to go when the disease returns, the Dasatinib treatment is know to knock out platelets, I took him in on Wednesday for a platelet transfusion and his counts showed that he was neutropaenic, I asked the nurse to request that he be given a shot of GCSF, this is a special drug that boosts neutraphils in the blood.

The registrar on call refused to give him a shot of GCSF and we went back home, by 4.30 in the morning of Thursday he was running temperature of 39.5 and we did the usual panic and eventually drove him into UCH in a very poorly condition.

Another day of frustration followed including placement on a 4 bed open bay on a surgical ward, (the last time he was on a 4 bed open surgical bay he got MRSA!)

Eventually by midnight and after some serious conversations to explain to the bed management team what our idea of customer service was, he had been settled in a room on T13.

He eventually got a pool of platelets, his count had dropped to 5 by then (normal range is 250 – 400). And overnight he finally got his shot of GCSF. Lo and behold this morning his neutraphil count was above 1.

Huge thanks to Julie and Rob who steeped into the breech and took Bailey to theirs where he is enjoying the company of their 2 Alsatians and probably being taught some dog manners, it is this time of year that James celebrates his transplant Anniversary too so good on ya mate!

His chest is not entirely right and he clearly has some infection so he is likely to be in hospital for a few days at least while they get on top of it. As of this evening he was feeling a lot brighter as he had been given a blood transfusion which always lifts his energy levels.

Watch this space!

Love to all

Colin